Micro fragmentation questions

[Pyroprone]

I'm curious to learn more about the process dubbed micro fragmentation. There's multiple organizations useing this technique in a effort to rebuild damaged reefs. From my understanding they are taking the smallest possible frags off of coral even in some cases single polyps from some SPS. The idea being that it's growth rate from that size of a frag is supposedly dramatically faster then compared to a larger frag. I've tried doing some searching but haven't had much luck finding information on this process in detail. Does anyone here know more about why a smaller frag like they are making would grow faster? And if that was the case why would people who sell coral keep mother colonies and not just repeatedly cut down smaller frags into micros? I'm just curious why a single polyp would grow faster than a traditional frag it doesn't make sense to me.

 

[chris85]

 

[Pyroprone]

Yup this is what I'm talking about... I'm just curious why a smaller frag would grow faster then what we typically see in the industry. And if it's the case why isn't it a standard in the hobbyist portion of reefing. Seems it would make more sense to cut peices much smaller than people typically do.

 

[chris85]

I am by no means an expert, but my take is really we are doing microfragmentation. No really a single polyp just because who would pay for one polyp. Microfragmentatio is just cutting up a colony and the damage part heals faster than natural growth. Kind of like, if you break your arm as a kid it doesn't take a life time for it to heal. It heals up while your arm is still growing. So by " breaking the corals arm" it sends a signal that it has been damaged and needs to fix it better than it was before so it doesn't happen again. I am guessing it would do the same thing if you did a single polyp, but most are not trained to do it. Hope this makes since and I am at work so I dont have time to proofread!!

 

[Pyroprone]

Yeah that makes sense... I think I was over thinking all of this. When I was first looking at it I was thinking a single polyp frag would have a hight percentage growth rate after it was healed Wich doesn't make much sense. Still a cool thing they are doing though

 

[kenneking]

Microfragmentation is similar to what we are doing in the hobby. The point is to apply many small fragments to an area at a time instead of one bigger colony. The species Mote Marine and other restoration organizations are using are slow growing boulder corals (encrusting corals in the hobby). When you out plant a small colony, that colony may be 5-7 years old and still only be 5 inches in diameter. That could also make them sexually mature, which causes the colony to focus on creating gametes often more so than growing. When the corals are microfragged, the corals are cut into 1-5cm pieces that are VERY thin so they can begin laying down their skeleton on the substrate ASAP. When you place 10s-100s of these small corals together they are all focused on growth and not sexually mature, so they will grow quicker and will eventually fuse to the other corals of the same genotype creating one large coral.